Rent-to-Own

Promoting Your Web Site by Joe Dysart

You Want Service With That? The Importance of Customer Service in RTO by Bud Holladay

APROfile: Lisa Neyhart — The Personal Touch by Thomas G. Dolan

 

 

 

 

 

Promoting your Web Site
By Joe Dysart

OK, So you have a great Web site. But who in the world knows about it? While Web fever has many rental-purchase organizations examining whether or not to commit to cyberspace, Internet marketing consultants warn that without proper marketing and promotion, Web sites can quickly become cyber elephants.

Chad Mitchell, advertising manager and buyer for Virginia-based Kelly Rentals, was responsible for creating his company’s Web site. "We felt like we were going to have to do it sooner or later," says Mitchell. "We currently have a product order form that potential customers can submit, but we haven’t experienced a whole lot of traffic yet." Mitchell says that the first big change his company will make to the Web site will be to feature more products.

Slowly but surely, rental-purchase companies are creating an online presence, if only to have the company name out there and for when current and potential customers become more Internet savvy. It would benefit those rental dealers with Internet sites or those who are considering a Web site to learn a few tricks of the trade in creating and engaging online traffic.

The now-cliche Web maxim, ‘If you build it they will come,’ has lulled many online marketers into a false sense of opportunity. The truth is that Web site traffic building has its own set of PR needs and requires its own system of aggressive, attention-getting tactics" says Charles Sayers, an Internet marketing consultant based in Acworth, GA.

Once implemented, these tactics have the potential to produce significant new trade for rental-purchase businesses. The reason: 74 percent of Internet users shopped online this past Christmas selling season, according to Media Metrix (see sidebar for Web addresses), an Internet marketing research firm. And while many traditional rent-to-own customers do not have PCs at home, many have access to computers at work, school and at local libraries. Moreover, Internet marketers see the Web as marketing tool becoming even more effective for business as cell phones and inexpensive personal digital assistant devices begin offering Web access. Should you decide to make the plunge, Internet consultants advise you to take advantage as many of the following Web site marketing and promotion strategies as possible:

Consider a professional search-engine-listing firm. Seasoned Web users turn to search engines like Yahoo! and Excite to help them find specific information on the Net quickly. Essentially, they simply type in a subject area and the search engine brings back "links" that they can "click on" for further information.

Given the great power these search engines have to steer thousands of Net cruisers to specific sites, it should come as no surprise that a number of Web-savvy firms have cropped up to help firms be among the first "links" the search engines return to information seekers. Many of these service providers are profiled on SearchEngineWatch.

Elite Rent-To-Own, based in Eugene, OR, is apparently no stranger to this listing strategy. When the keywords "rent-to-own" were entered into Yahoo!, its site was the first link to be listed. That kind of visibility does not happen accidentally. Another winner in the listing wars was Budget Rental Centers, based in Victoria, British Columbia. Its site was first up when the same keywords were entered into AllTheWeb, another popular search engine.

Another option is to use a software program like Web Site Traffic Builder, by Draper, UT – based Intelliquis. Traffic Builder automatically registers your site with more than 900 Internet search engines and will automatically put your business in the appropriate category for each search engine. Plus, you can use the software to check your site’s position on the Net’s eight most popular search engines. A similar program, WebPosition Gold, by FirstPlace Software, focuses on getting your site placed high up on the Web’s top search engines.

Rent or buy a consumer e-mail list. This is probably one of the easiest – although maybe one of the most expensive – ways to promote a Web site and company services on the Web. Essentially, firms using this technique rent exposure in an e- mail customer distribution list of a firm that is already established on the Web. Often, the firm owning the list recommends via e-mail that its customers visit the site of the list renter and sometimes includes a discount coupon for a goods or services at the list renter’s site.

Create "hook" pages. Many a site has drawn in Net cruisers by creating informational pages that in turn offer links to a commercial site, according to Craig Settles, a senior strategist for Berkeley, CA-based Successful Marketing Strategists and author of Cybermarketing: Essentials for Success. An information page thoroughly detailing the benefits of rent-to-own agreements, for example, would serve as a good "hook" to a commercial site specializing in the same service.

Link ’til you drop. Probably the easiest, least expensive and most effective way to promote a site is to link your page with every other noncompetitive page on the Internet that shares the same interest. That includes links with trading partners, local businesses and organizations and your local chamber of commerce.

Enter as many Web site contests as possible. Web sites that have the mettle should attempt to get their new (or improved) site judged by the many "cool site of the day," week, etc. judging services. Sites that are judged worthy of an award are given the equivalent of a graphic blue ribbon that can be posted on the winning site. And the awarding service also provides a free link to the winning page from its own home page – a perk that can literally generate thousands of visits to a new Web site, according to Sayers. Adds Jim Wilson, the Webmaster behind Virtual Promote and a samurai-class Web marketer, "Keep in mind that most people who will be surfing to your Web site don’t know the relative difficulty (or ease) of earning different awards. All they see is that some people thought your site was good enough to win an award. Go ahead. Apply for everything."

Offer coupons. This is another old-economy bricks-and-mortar solution that works just as well – if not better – on the Web. Coupons can be offered easily online for easy printout, or periodically delivered directly to the visitors’ e-mail boxes. The advantage of e-mail delivery is that the business can more easily build a relationship with customers over time, since they do not have to make any effort to search for the coupons. Colortyme Rent To Own, based in Alice, TX, offers a $25 off coupon at its site. Rent-2-Own, offers a generous two months free rent coupon at its site. And A to Z Rentals, based in Jasper, AL, offers a $10 off coupon at its site.

Start your own contest. Another tried-and-true traffic generator in the bricks-and- mortar world, online contests do the same for Web sites – as well as glean valuable demographic data about site visitors. Rent-to-own businesses that offer coupons could also offer the chance to win more generous awards for Web visitors willing to share a little information about them on an interactive form.

Establish a virtual press center. Probably one of the most overlooked opportunities on the Web is the opportunity to establish a virtual press center on a site. Increasingly, journalists are turning to the Internet and the Web to search for stories and develop new ideas, and there is no reason why any company with a Web site should pass up an opportunity for free media exposure, says Settles. RentWay, based in Erie, PA, embraces the virtual press room concept in earnest. In addition to press releases online, it also offers downloadable audio/video Webcasts of key company news events. Of course, being a publicly traded company such as RentWay, having a Web site press room is almost mandatory these days. Become an information clearinghouse. Web sites featuring in-depth information resources are magnets for potential customers. A good start, for example, is to simply offer as many links as possible to Web sites offering information related to the rent-to-own industry. Alternatively, you may want to create a series of in-depth backgrounders on your own approach to rent-to-own.

Offer a branded news ticker. This is probably one of the more innovative of Web site promotion strategies being used on the Web today. Currently, a number of news organizations offer free, Web-based news feeds to any Web site interested in running those feeds. Individual.com, for example, offers free news feeds to Web sites.

Get posted in Web directories. In an effort to make Web cruising a little easier, a number of businesses have packaged themselves in easy-to-use directories to help get to their sites more quickly. Locatel, based in Montreal, Canada, links to The Montreal Page, an online directory of the Canadian city’s goods and services.

Add a chat room. This is the application that catapulted America Online to the premier spot among Internet service providers. Essentially, it’s a place where 30 or so people can "congregate," and exchange live text messages with one another over the Net. The operative word here is "live." In a chat room, everyone gets to read and respond to anything that anyone else feels inspired to write on the spot. For more information, type the keywords "chat room software" into any popular search engine.

Consider banner ads. Many Web sites are promoted by brief flourishes of color and text – banner ads – that float across the screen while Net cruisers are visiting related Web sites. "During the past year, many services have sprung up to help Webmasters find other sites to exchange banner advertising," says Virtual Promote’s Wilson. You can find out more about banner ads by visiting SmartClicks, Banner Swap and Trade Banners.

Start a newsletter. Interesting and informative company newsletters are a time -honored way to establish an ongoing relationship with current and prospective customers. Tech Rentals, based in Ringwood, Victoria, Australia, puts a Web spin on the newsletter with a sign-up online for e- mail alerts. Each alert offers news of special promotions and sales regularly offered by the RTO firm. Full-O-Pep American Rental Co., based in Bloomington, IN, has a similar e-mail alert sign-up at its site.

Add a send-this-page option. A new twist on one of the most reliable forms of advertising – word-of-mouth – send-this-page options enable site visitors to send your home page, or any other site page for that matter, to a friend with a few mouse-clicks.

Offer free classified ads. A bread-and-butter advertising staple of every newspaper in America, classified ads are also a big hit on the Net. Many businesses offer classified domains as a free service, just to draw more traffic to their sites. A rent-to-own business, for example, might want to offer a free "personals" ad service.

Add a "Recommend this site to a friend" button. The old maxim "Nothing is more valuable than word-of-mouth promotion" never rang truer in cyberspace. Get your Web designer to add a "Recommend this site" button. By clicking on the button, the visitor can dash off a quick "heads-up" about the site to a friend, which is then automatically forwarded to the friend’s e- mail address.

Make your site truly global. While most of us are comfortable bandying about catch phrases like "international marketplace" and "global economy," only a handful of sites on the Web are actually truly global in reach. The reason: few businesses have bothered to sport more than their own language on their sites. If your rent-to-own business is in an ethnically diverse community, you may want to reach out to as many cultures as possible. Simply offering your Web site in a number of languages – say Spanish and Chinese, for example – is a good start. You also may want to hire on a localization consultant to help you further customize your site for specific cultures. For more info on localizers, visit Silicon Valley Localization Forum, hosted by TGP Consulting, based in Palo Alto, CA.

Concludes Sayers, "Combining these tactics with a relentless persistence to build your site’s traffic will virtually guarantee that within a few short weeks, your access counters [a software tool used to measure visits to a Web site] will start spinning like the gallon indicator on a 1950s gas pump."

Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Thousand Oaks, CA, 805/379-3673, joedysart@digitalubiquity.com, www.digitalubiquity.com.
 

 

You Want Service With That?
By Bud Holladay

Lunchtime. You wheel into the drive-through, fork over $5 for a fast lunch and a surly kid who’d rather be anywhere else wordlessly drops your change into your outstretched palm, sticks a bag in your face and sla ms the window shut. Have a nice day. You don’t even bother checking the bag; you know the order won’t be right. But getting it corrected takes too much time and causes too much aggravation. You drive away vowing never to return. Tomorrow you try your luck at the place across the street. There, the line of waiting customers is long and restless. Employees mill about behind the counter, joking and laughing, completely oblivious to the people waiting for their food. All conversation, all eye contact, is with each other. The customers are an interruption. Sure enough, they get your order wrong here, too. Instead of an apology and a quick turnaround, you get The Treatment. The young man at the cash register – apparently the missing twin of the one across the street – glares at you, snatches the tray from your hands and retreats to the kitchen, all the while mumbling something about your parentage, his wage rate, management in general and people who expect things to be perfect. Have a nice day. Eventually you’re handed a new tray containing most of what you ordered and you slink silently to the nearest empty table, vowing never to return.

Fast-food emporiums don’t have an exclusive on incivility and poor service. How many department store clerks have ignored your armload of purchases and simply pointed wordlessly when you asked directions to the next department? How about the doctor’s office that always calls to remind you of your appointment, but when you show up leaves you cooling your jets in the reception area for what seems like hours with no explanation or apology. Rental store delivery crews routinely forget hoses, cables, remote controls; many haven’t a clue how to assemble the bedroom set for which some customer just plunked down $100. Have a nice day.

Faulty Expectations

We’ve become so used to bad service nowadays that we nearly expect it. When a store clerk or service worker demonstrates simple courtesy, we think that’s good service. It’s really no more than common civility, the kind you should be able to expect from any human being. Service is more than simple courtesy. It could be defined as a process rather than an act. Companies that have service figured out – Neiman-Marcus and Disney, to name a couple – seem able to anticipate what customers will want and how they’ll want it, and they are ruthless in eradicating anything that might get in the way of that. The policies and procedures of those companies are built around the requirement to deliver exemplary service, instead of vice versa.

If you’ve ever visited a Disney property you know what a difference that makes. Imagine the same kid at the burger joint smiling, opening the bag and checking the order in front of you and returning your change in a little envelope so you don’t have to juggle coins, bills and your lunch bag while gripping a steering wheel. Imagine him finishing this off with a big smile and a "Thank You" that sounds real, not pre-recorded. Imagine that he fully understands the value of customers as they relate to his income and well being. Imagine.

It Takes a Village to Make a Great Service

Interestingly enough, Rally’s Hamburgers started out with exactly that kind of service. Trouble is, their service guy was better than their other guys; Rally’s never could get enough stores open in any one market to justify the level of advertising needed to build a national or even a regional presence. The moral to the story is that service alone won’t get you there if your business plan is inherently flawed. But if all the other pieces are in place and service really means lip service, you’re history the day somebody opens up down the street with the total package. That outfit quickly becomes the "big guy" and your organization is suddenly struggling to keep up. (Ever notice how nobody ever worries about the competition until it gets too big to do anything about? That’s the second moral.)

The people at Disney provide great service because legions of people within the organization are hired specifically for that purpose. They hold degrees from good schools and have the same clout and status as those in charge of operations or marketing or finance. In most service industries – including rental-purchase – the trainer is usually the district manager who couldn’t or the boss’s nephew who could. While everybody talks about service and quality, most rewards are based on hitting quotas or meeting certain percentages. How do you measure the number of customers who didn’t come back because we didn’t live up to our own advertising? How do you quantify the number of referral accounts we don’t get?

In a medium- to low-wage environment everything has to function flawlessly for quality to come through. Otherwise, people are so bogged down in the process that they lose sight of the objective. In case anybody doesn’t know by now, the objective is to provide total customer satisfaction, even in the face of adversity, time constraints or personal inconvenience. That kind of mandate can be hard to satisfy.

Paying Homage to the Home Office

The truth is that most multi-unit retail and service operations employ low-wage workers because that’s the only way they can keep their product affordable (the armed forces being no exception). Only a fool would argue that there’s no benefit in hiring better, smarter, faster workers. But such benefits don’t produce immediate sales increases, don’t reduce overhead and they always require hard analysis. Home office wants results today. More hands turning more burgers or renting more product = more cash in the till. Managers quickly learn what satisfies the boss. In emergency-room vernacular, multi-unit managers are hired to stop the bleeding or to start the heart pumping. We don’t hire them to manage a long process of conditioning and strengthening. Few of them can produce instant results in sales and collections while simultaneously directing a systematic plan for long-range improvement based on selective hiring, specialized training, regular monitoring and directed rewards. By the time they get to the monitoring part, it’s time to hire another new body. When those responsible for delivering great service are the newest or the lowest paid people in the organization – and their supervisors lack the kind of training that lets them control outcomes instead of procedures – not much good can be expected to happen.

Placing Value Where Value’s Due

It’s easy to say that raising wages improves customer service, but it probably doesn’t unless management changes a lot of other things first. One of those is the average length of service of front line workers. Management has to find ways to let new account managers and customer service reps stick around long enough to get good. That means increasing the outlay on recruiting and training while reducing spending on other, less essential items.

Exactly what those items might be differs from company to company.

Look hard and you will find that the difference between the biggest and all the rest in our business – and in most others – is more than just finance or marketing; it goes to how much value each company places on the people who handle their customers. One fact is inescapable: In our business, the biggest companies have the best training. But almost none started there. Nobody opens their first store or even their 10th with a developed training department staffed by experts in that field. No, the giant operators simply bought their way in. Almost without exception, every mega-operator in the business started out paying store managers and account managers more than the other guy paid. Tom Devlin, founder of Rent-A-Center, once told an APRO audience that the real advantage his company enjoyed over the rest of us wasn’t lower product cost or cheaper advertising. It was people.

When we were paying managers $30,000 a year, Rent-A-Center was paying $38,000 or more. Consequently, Tom Devlin got the best managers and the competition got the rest. While everybody else replaced managers and struggled with sales and collections, Rent-ACenter was opening store after store. It isn’t unusual to meet a former RAC store manager who became a millionaire helping Tom Devlin or Ernie Talley grow that company.

The Cost of Lost Customers

Beyond wages, keeping new employees around requires that we also see other things differently. For example, if price and product are competitive and thus not an issue, why do up to 20 percent of customers return their goods within the first five months? That number suggests that only 80 percent of rental-purchase customers have sufficient motivation to take whatever measures are required to keep their account open. To be fair, there are a certain number of customers who just can’t keep up the payments, no matter how satisfied. It’s the rest that have to be accounted for. Some companies spend up to $25 in advertising to get one new customer. How much does anybody spend learning what happened to last year’s customers? Last month’s?

Taking the Higher Road

Delivering high-quality service should be everybody’s aim and usually it is. But when the process fails, it becomes nobody’s child. Part of the problem with multi-unit operations of any kind is the cookie-cutter process required to manage a lot of them across great distances. Everything has to be reduced to a simple process that can be easily followed by people with no specialized skills and only minimal training. When executed, that process produces the desired results more often than not. Costs are contained within acceptable limits and the cash is accounted for. Upper management, usually sitting miles away and far from the end user, invariably confuses efficient function with the delivery of quality service. Thus, any unit that makes the numbers gets a pass on anything else. To be sure, management up and down the line gets agitated when sales decline. When the chart starts heading the wrong direction, the advertising gets a new message, stores get new paint and new signs and a few prices get changed. Sure enough, sales inch upward again and everybody’s satisfied until the next go-round. The next go-round comes when the new customers eventually tire of spending their money where nobody cares and they move on, too. (Sometimes management realizes these cycles are occurring with greater frequency and they decide to spend a little money figuring out why. Invariably, this leads to a lot of breast beating and wailing but not much change because nobody can afford the improvements after paying for the consultants.)

If there’s anything to learn from all this, it is that wherever you see a sign reading, "Our Policy Is 100% Customer Satisfaction," you can bet that it probably isn’t. They only put the sign up to make you feel better while some employee busts your chops in the process of enforcing policy. Companies that routinely deliver great service don’t have to hang signs telling you what’s coming. They trust you’ll know it when you see it.

Bud Holladay is an industry veteran and frequent contributor to Progressive Rentals magazine.

 

The Personal Touch
Communication Skills Are The Key to Lisa Neyhart’s Success
An APRO file by Thomas G. Dolan

"From a woman’s standpoint, this has been a male-dominated field,"says Lisa Neyhart, who got started in the business in 1985 as a $4-an-hour sales representative and has worked up through the ranks to owning her own company. Neyhart says that while there is always room for improvement, the industry’s attitude toward women has changed for the better. "When I was just starting out and went to a conference, I would see only a handful of women. Now there are many more and several are branching out to start their own companies. So a lot has changed. I also think a lot of managers are looking to hire more women now as they are more appreciative of women’s communication skills."

Neyhart lists her own communication skills as a key factor in moving her forward in the industry. She got her start in Louisiana going to work for Patrick "Pat" Parker, who currently has 29 stores in Louisiana, Ohio, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Rhode Island and New York under the name of Utica Rentals. In 1992, she was transferred to Ohio. Over the years she was promoted to regional manager and then vice president as her range of responsibilities grew. Along the way, she continually sharpened her skills by taking courses in subjects such as supervision, coaching and delinquency management.

In 1996, Neyhart increased profits by $385,000 in the Western region, as well as being responsible for the largest BOR increase through a gain of 1,300 units. Volume increase in 1996 was 9 percent, followed by 15 percent in 1997, 9 percent in 1998 and 17 percent in 1999. During her rise to success, she met and married Tom Neyhart in 1996. Tom, who had a close relationship with Parker, branched off, with the latter’s blessing, into his own store in Baton Rouge, LA, called TJ Rentals Inc. Lisa also worked with Parker to achieve a similar independence about two years ago for her store in Hammond, LA.

Now husband and wife are partners in the ownership of the two stores in a business called Success Rental Systems Inc., doing business as ColorTyme. Although this business is now separate from Parker’s, Lisa says they are still "loosely affiliated." Tom, in fact, also still works as chief operating officer for Parker’s business. Lisa, however, retired from Utica at the end of 2000 in order to spend more time with her three teenage children. "I was on the road nine weeks out of twelve," she says. "Now I don’t have to travel anymore."

Swaying Political Foes

The couple has long been pro-industry, with Tom recently serving on the APRO board of directors. Lisa has made special use of her communication skills by becoming actively involved in the legislative process to help combat the sometimes negative perception of the industry. Although she credits Tom for being active in this arena longer, she is currently close to finishing her term as president of the New York Rental Dealers Association, on whose behalf she has visited members of Congress about 20 to 25 times a year for the past three years. At one point, she took notice of a program in New York in which used or broken cell phones were picked up and taken to the telephone company to be repaired and reprogrammed only for 911 calls. These phones were then distributed to battered women who could use the phones as a means for safety. She has now taken that program to legislators in Louisiana and is in the process of getting it implemented there.

Perhaps her biggest legislative victory in terms of the industry, however, was her spearheading the defeat of a proposed bill in New York that would have effectively put rentto- own companies out of business. Neyhart contacted Marian Gibson, an aide to Senator Charles Fuschillo, who was sponsoring the bill. She was able to establish a rapport with Gibson and this was a start of the educational process. Neyhart and her associates were able to dispel the notion that rent-to-own was some kind of shady business designed to exploit the poor. The senator was receptive and withdrew the bill.

Personalized Service = Success

Neyhart’s main communication efforts, however, are directed toward her business. All successful businesses, by their very nature, tend to become standardized. Neyhart, however, tries to keep her business from becoming cookie-cutter as she makes every effort to put a personal touch to customer interaction. Take advertising, for instance. She uses the conventional media such as radio spots and radio remotes, ADVO and television, as well as direct mail brochures, but her most successful efforts are those that incorporate the people factor.For instance, when the drivers make a delivery, they’ll ask if the customer needs something else. If the customer responds by taking on a washing machine, the driver gets $5. On each call the driver will knock on doors five houses to the left and right of the customer and drop off coupons, fliers or brochures.

"The majority of our business comes from our thank-you cards and in-house mailing program," Neyhart says. Neyhart sees any c ontact with new customers as an opportunity. For instance, thank-you letters routinely go out to every reference the new customer lists, along with the note, "Here’s a $25 coupon, come in and see us sometime." Neyhart even has what she calls an "Oops" letter. "If we make a mistake, we’ll sign the letter and send it with an apology," she says.

A solid part of the "personalized service" routine involves a manager or owner calling the customer three days after a delivery. "We make sure that the delivery and installation proceeded as expected, that everything was done right and that the customer is happy," Neyhart says. "Sometimes deliveries run late or somebody forgets to deliver the remote to the VCR. What this allows us to do to is take care of any problems and make sure we have a satisfied customer before any collection call takes place." In other words, a satisfied customer is not only apt to be a return customer, he will also be inclined to pay on time. Again, it’s good communication that builds the relationship. The more effort that goes into the transaction early on, especially in terms of making clear that the customer understands the rental agreement, the payment date due and the reasons for the various provisions in the contract, the more committed the customer will be to honor it.

If there is a nonpayment, Neyhart doesn’t believe the first response should be, as she says, "Either pay or I’ll pick it up," for that just sets the person back on his heels. "What needs to be done is solving the problem. Find out the problem and then be a problem solver to help the customer pay. I call my collection principles the three F’s – be fair, firm and friendly. Follow them and they will do good for you."

Energy and Enthusiasm Required

The three-day follow-up call by the manager or owner, in addition to nipping any problem in the bud, also builds in the added benefit of being able to find out how well the employees who went into the customer’s home represented the company. "The call serves as a customer survey," Neyhart says. She explains that if the customer gives a positive response, the employee gets recognized as a part of the "Wow" program. "If the customer tells us that the employee took the old refrigerator to the road or moved the furniture around three times to get things looking right even though she knew he didn’t have to, we’ll put the customer’s remarks and the employee’s name up on the bulletin board."

The employees are recognized at weekly staff meetings and, once a month, the employee with the most or best "Wows" will receive some spontaneous appreciation, ranging from a free lunch to a $100 bonus. "I look at myself as a cheerleader who encourages people to do their very best," Neyhart says. "I believe the two main attributes I bring to my business are energy and enthusiasm. If you have those qualities and tackle problems with a positive attitude, everything else will fall into place." Neyhart adds, "We work in terms of the buddy system. If someone is not performing quite the way he should, then we make the effort to pep him up, to bring him up to the high energy level that we want to have filling the store." Because Neyhart is striving to create a positive image in a business which sometimes has negative connotations to the public, she makes it her practice to hire new employees from outside the field. "This way they don’t bring in any bad habits. We can train them that customer service is the key," Neyhart says.

An important dynamic to running a successful business is attracting the right employees. "You have to be able to find people who can respond to your energy level, to recruit them and then to keep them," Neyhart says. The key to high retention, she says, is training. Every quarter the company rents a hotel conference room and provides training for half the staff one day and the other half the next. Then there is ongoing, more informal training at the store. "Young managers are often afraid to educate their workers for they are in fear of losing their own jobs," Neyhart says. "But the more you educate, the easier your job is. If you have four people working under you and all of you are working at 100 percent capacity, that’s much different than if you are working at 100 percent capacity and they are each working at only a 25 percent capacity."

Neyhart says, "There’s something about motivating others to grow that really satisfies me. I’ve watched people I’ve trained develop and grow and then watched them move out to start their own stores. That gives me pride and helps motivate me to keep doing my best." In order to really bring the best out of people, Neyhart says, "you have to give them an opportunity to fulfill their dreams. It’s not enough just to have them work for you. They have to feel that they have ownership in what they are doing. If you really want strong motivated people working for you, you have to share. You have to give them a part of the pie."

Performance evaluations take place twice a year, in which management and employees review goals for the past six months, determine how well the goals were met and project goals for the coming six months. "We talk about responsibilities and review specific categories, such as sales ability and customer service," Neyhart says. Pay raises are determined on an annual basis, resulting from these semi-annual conferences. Bonuses, however, are paid once a month. Account reps receive their bonuses on their credit closures per week and unit gain for each route. Sales associates are paid a percentage of new rental income. And managers are paid on profitability. As the employees grow the business, they grow both their incomes and their opportunity for advancement.

Neyhart’s unique and personal approach to the rental-purchase business is paying off. "We plan to open a new store next year," Neyhart says. "And hope not long after that to grow to six stores." With such a high level of determination, there is no doubt her stores will continue to promote a more positive image of the industry in the years to come.

Thomas G. Dolan is a free-lance writer living in Anacortes, WA.